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Avoiding Caverns in the Arbuckle Mountains Using Electrical Imaging Methods

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Avoiding Caverns in the Arbuckle Mountains Using Electrical Imaging Methods AVOIDING CAVERNS IN THE ARBUCKLE MOUNTAINS USING ELECTRICAL IMAGING METHODS Peter J. Hutchinson THG Geophysics, Ltd., 4280 Old Wm. Penn Hwy., Murrysville, Pennsylvania, 15668,USA, [email protected] Abstract farms. As of 2016, Oklahoma has 3,134 megawatts The Arbuckle Mountains in Oklahoma are a unique of installed wind capacity (AWEA, 2017). Monies province with nearly vertical dipping beds of the Upper (2017) reported that as of 2017, Oklahoma had 6,600 Cambrian to Lower Ordovician Arbuckle Group. The megawatts of wind power that supply one quarter of Arbuckle Group consists of intercalated sequences of Oklahoma’s generated electricity. thick carbonates and thinner shales and sandstones. Syn- Pennsylvanian mountain building steeply tilted these The permitting process for a wind farm provides beds. Subsequently, caves and voids developed within the limited tower relocation potential without an carbonate beds, presumably by hypogene speleogenesis. extensive repermitting process; however, most permits provide for some limited relocation of Numerous dissolution cavities and several major cave a tower within an approximately 30 m radius of systems have been mapped within the Arbuckle Mountain the tower without going through the repermitting Wind Farm located 19 km north of Ardmore, Oklahoma. process. Wind turbine towers consist, from the Electrical resistivity imaging was determined to be the most ground up, of the foundation, stalk, nacelle, and rotor effective method of mapping subsurface voids and caverns blades. The foundation, in general, is a 15 m wide by due to the strong electrical contrast between carbonate units 3 m deep steel-reinforced concrete subsurface slab. and void-filling sediments and groundwater. Unstable foundations can cause the towers to topple so the location of a stable foundation is critical to the Electrical resistivity imaging during early stages of the installation of a tower. wind farm development identified numerous caverns and voids beneath proposed turbine sites; consequently, The wind turbine towers are erected by crawler cranes several wind tower locations were moved. This report that are slow (1.4 km/hr), 187 m tall, and very heavy addresses the East Access Road to six proposed turbine with a ballast weight of approximately 600 t (Liebherr, wind tower sites where three towers and access road 2017). Crawler cranes are erected at a staging area near the towers were relocated south of their original and crawl to the individual towers for construction proposed locations. Further, the Main Access Road of the wind turbine towers. Further, crawler cranes to these six tower sites had to be rerouted due to the due to their height can only tip up to 5° from vertical presence of two previously unidentified sinkholes and a before catastrophic collapse. Consequently, the road major cavern system, the Wild Woman Cave Complex. upon which the crane travels must be stable. Electrical imaging method identified subsurface Areas with poor agricultural potential create ideal anomalies along the proposed access roads and at four opportunities for wind power development, since the of the six towers. The towers were moved away from the land is often remote and underutilized. One of these subsurface anomalies and the access roads were relocated areas is located in the southern portion of the Arbuckle to positions where subsurface anomalies would not pose Mountains, eponymously named after General a hazard to the heavy crawler cranes, used to erect the Matthew Arbuckle (1778–1851). The 6,000-hectare towers. The 50-tower Anadarko Mountain Wind Farm Arbuckle Mountain Wind Farm consists of 50 was successfully completed in 2016. wind turbine generators that can produce 100 MW of electricity. Construction of the wind farm was Introduction challenging due to the presence of karst topography Oklahoma ranks 8th for wind energy potential and within the steeply dipping beds of limestone and maintains over 2,000 wind turbines in over 27 wind dolostone sediments (Figure 1). 15TH SINKHOLE CONFERENCE NCKRI SYMPOSIUM 7 347 Caverns and passages at the site have been mapped by The predominant rocks of interest at the site are the karst- various grotto groups for decades and provided a useful forming limestones and dolostones. These carbonate characterization of the subsurface anomalies in the study rocks are estimated to be many thousands of feet thick area. For example, Harrel (1959) published a detailed (Ham, 1973). Surficial karst features observed in the cave map of Wild Woman Cave (Figure 2). field consisted of solution weathered vugs, bedding plane fractures, and voids. Geology Arbuckle Mountain Wind Farm is situated in the western Three geological groups lie within the footprint of the portion of the Arbuckle Mountains of south central Oklahoma Arbuckle Wind Project. They are listed in order of (Figure 1). This portion of the Arbuckle Mountains is decreasing age: middle Cambrian Colbert Rhyolite; noted for having karst topography. The rock units consist upper Cambrian/lower Ordovician Arbuckle Group; and predominantly of limestone, dolomite and rhyolite, with middle Ordovician Simpson Group. minor amounts of shale and sandstone. The carbonate units are characterized by having sinkholes, dolines, and caverns. The Colbert Rhyolite, located in the northern portion of wind farm, is a “…pink porphyritic rhyolite, locally The rocks in this portion of the Arbuckle Mountains flow-banded…” (Ham, 1951). are part of the Arbuckle anticline and are contiguous with a south-dipping thrust fault, the Washita Valley The Arbuckle Group contains 8 Formations, the Fort Fault Zone (Johnson, 1990). The sediments at the Sill Limestone, Royer Dolomite, Signal Mountain wind farm site strike N45°W and dip up to 45°SW. Formation, Butterly Dolomite, McKenzie Hill Formation, Deformation or mountain building occurred during Cook Creek Formation, Kindblade Formation, and the the Middle Pennsylvanian time and ended during the West Spring Creek Formation. These formations are Late Pennsylvanian as flat-lying upper Pennsylvanian composed of limestone and dolomite with a maximum and Permian rocks overly the steeply inclined lower thickness of 2,000 m in the Arbuckle Mountain region Pennsylvanian rocks in other areas nearby. (Ham, 1973). Thin sandstone beds are present within the Figure 1. Geologic map of the western portion of the Arbuckle Mountains showing the locations of proposed wind turbine towers (green dots) to the Arbuckle Mountain Wind Farm (Johnson, 1990). 348 NCKRI SYMPOSIUM 7 15TH SINKHOLE CONFERENCE Figure 2. Subsurface plan map of Wild Woman Cave, Arbuckle Mountains (Harrel, 1959). West Spring and Cool Creek Formations and cherty and Where, resistance, R (Ohms), is equal to the ratio sandy limestone is found throughout the Cool Creek and of potential, V (volts), to current flow, I (amperes). McKenzie Hill Formations. Resistivity, then, is a measure of the resistance (ρ) along a linear distance (L) of a material with a known cross- The Simpson Group contains 5 Formations, the Joins, Oil sectional area (A). Creek, McLish, Tulip Creek, and Bromide Formations. R = ρL / A;where V A These units have a maximum thickness of 700 m in the where ρ = Arbuckle Mountain region and are mainly comprised I L of limestone and dolomites with basal sandstones and Consequently, resistivity is measured in Ohm-meters minor amounts of shale (Ham, 1973). and the data can be presented as a geo-electrical profile of modeled apparent resistivity versus depth. During the formation of dolomite the net rock volume of limestone decreases leaving voids and vugs that can Electrical currents propagate as a function of three induce further dissolution. Klimchouk (2007; 2014) material properties: (1) ohmic conductivity, (2) documents hypogene speleogenesis, or vertically electrolytic conductivity, and (3) dielectric conductivity. upward migration of groundwater during the course of Ohmic conductivity is a property exhibited by metals depositional history, as a mechanism for the creation (Kaufman, 1992). Electrolytic conductivity is a function of karst topography. Eschberger (2012) and Eschberger of the concentration of total dissolved solids and salts et al. (2014) noted hydrothermal intrusion during the in the groundwater that exists in the pore spaces of a Cambrian. Remanent magnetization of ferro-magnesium material (Reynolds, 1997). Dielectric conductivity is a minerals during Pennsylvanian–Permian deformation function of the permittivity of the matrix of the material has been attributed to the percolation of orogenic fluids (von Hippel, 1954). Therefore, the matrix of most soil through the carbonate units (Nick and Elmore, 1990). and bedrock is highly resistive. Of these three properties, Sykes (1997) documented active basinal fluids during electrolytic conductivity is the dominant material the Arbuckle and Laramide orogenies. Vertically upward characteristic that influences the apparent resistivity flushing has continued to the present (for example, see values collected by this method (Milsom, 1989). Puckett, 2009; and Christensen et al., 2011). Blackwood (2017) and Blackwood et al. (2015) argued successfully In general, resistivity values decrease in water-bearing that hypogenic flow created or initiated the dissolution rocks and soil with increasing: fractional volume of the processes, or speleogenesis, within the Arbuckle rock occupied by groundwater; total dissolved solid and Mountains. chloride content of the groundwater; permeability of the pore spaces; and, temperature.
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